It’s Valentine’s Day. So, as much as I find this holiday sort of disagreeable, like it or not and being who I am, I’m still lamenting over it.

I’ve never really embraced this holiday, even when I was in a relationship. I’d always anticipated it coming around, because I’m a girl, and let’s face it, girls love getting flowers and being fawned over. But I’ve always found it sort of sad. The more I’d think about it, the more unfair it would seem that most other days of the year, I wouldn’t receive that care and special treatment. Little gestures have always meant so much more to me than grand professions of devotion. Secondly, I would always feel bad for all of the single people that were meant to feel left out and inferior. I’d always feel kind of guilty being taken out for Valentine’s Day dinner; like I was rubbing it in the faces of all of the single strangers we’d encounter that day, giggling and gazing obliviously.

Secretly, I’m holding a little grudge today against all of my non-single friends. Don’t get me wrong. I really, truly love seeing couples most any other day. Observing people in love is a wonderful thing, but seeing them all out in public en masse is sort of painful when you’re not one of them. It’s like some secret tree house club you weren’t cool enough to have the password for, so you have to pine away for another year, hoping to attain that level of cool.

Right now, I feel pretty fucking uncool, that’s for sure.

Having all of this on my mind made me dredge up my decaying past. A few years ago, I had the misfortune of being involved with a rather shady character who was dating me and another girl simultaneously. Once that discovery was made, we became close friends… not what most girls would do, but I pride myself on being unlike ‘most girls’ and I was happy to have found someone like myself. We both started new, seemingly healthy relationships around the same time after that disaster and oddly enough, ended them within a month of one another. Both of us being products of infidelity, we of course blamed ourselves.

Oddly enough, it took us two years to finally meet. For a year and a half, I was living in Chicago but once I moved home the natural progression of things was to hang out. And hang out we did. Mostly crying and drinking. It was fucking awful but I neither of us had anyone in our lives that would put up with the amount of hurt we had to purge from our systems.

Last night, I came across something that Janine had written to me in literally my most miserable hour, 2 weeks before I left Chicago and shortly before her relationship ended, so eventually I got to return the favor.

These are probably the nicest, most helpful words anyone had ever said to me. Maybe nicer thoughts had been thought by other people, but they were never vocalized. I read them now, after so long, and they still make me tear up:

Karen,

I am honored to know you.  I think to myself that I cannot wait to meet you so I will finally get to know the kind of person I have been waiting to know for quite awhile. Someone like me but better than me and much more well-written.

I would bet so many others feel the same about you. That’s at least worth another day of tears.

I just want to tell you that it will all be alright.

This is what I imagine: Beautiful Karen crying in public on a bench on a warm day in Chicago. What I see is people walking by and seeing tears running down her face and wanting to stop and hug her just because even the most shallow man can see her soul today. God. I want to fucking hug you from here. And I want to promise you that it will be okay. Because you know it will, don’t you? Even though you don’t want to know it right now because the pain actually feels so good because it’s at least SOMETHING. What’s scary is when that something goes away and then you’re just numb…because that means starting over.

You don’t want to start over. I know I know I know. You don’t want to because starting over because what if it doesn’t ever feel like this again? If it hurts this bad, then it means it must have been that good…

I’m not going to tell you that ‘you’re not alone’ because obviously you know you’re not. I’m just going to tell you that it’s goddamn okay to be alone and from this you’ll find things about yourself that will make you even more beautiful than you are now. And to tell the truth, I can’t even see how that would be possible…but it is.

Don’t let him break you. DO NOT let him break you. Go ahead and fall to pieces a thousand times just so long as you can tape yourself back together. I have no problem with that.

Just wait. Time will sweep you up.

Oh. And I will hug you to pieces if you need it when you come home. Or at least listen to you talk for hours. Or bitch about his bad habits. You know, whatever stage you’re at at the time.

Love Always,

Janine

So, I moved home and tried to let these kinds of things carry me through my own personal hell. Eventually, the drinking had to stop, which it did… completely. That timing was perfect and I really believe that everything happens for a reason.

Even still, I swore that there was no way I was putting myself through that again. I wanted nothing to do with relationships or any ‘ships.’ Perhaps never. That seemed like a reasonable conclusion at the time. Self preservation.

Janine is a high school French teacher. One day, we were talking about the trappings of love and she mentioned something that the French call Coup de Foudre. Loosely defined, it means love at first sight. More precisely defined:

Coup de Foudre: A thunderbolt, or lightning strike. French expression which means the fact of sudden admiration in love for someone or something. It is a phenomenon almost mythical notions of love, and considered an ideal romantic.

That was exactly it. My long standing problem. I see it as a self esteem problem but mostly everyone I know doesn’t see it as such. People tell me that’s what makes me, ‘me’. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m able to overlook peoples shortcomings and see the good in everyone; that I’m able to admire so much in people. Boyfriends have told me the same thing. I’m quaint and charming and I feel everything so much and that I’m so compassionate and forgiving. For a long time, I saw it as a gift but ultimately what that translated to was that I’d fall in love with everyone and everything. Inanimate objects are often the objects of my affection. It took a lot for me to fall out of love. Too much.

I’ve used my discretion for the past year. A lot of that has depended on me sort of isolating myself from people but I feel like I’ve built up a sort of willpower. I think I’ve fine tuned my radar for everyday assholes that will take advantage of my personality. I no longer feel like I can fall in love with just anyone. It’s not easy for me to hold back, but I have been. There’s plenty of things I wish I could say, but I’m pretty guarded these days.

So, anyway. It’s okay being alone today. Of course, there’s still things I set my sights on and I get my hopes up for, but when it happens, it happens. Above all else, I believe in fate and what’s really meant to be.

I used to be the girl that was always looking for the lightning, waiting to be shocked into submission. Now, I’m just looking for the subtle light.